{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2014}} {{Short description|German art dealer (1908–1992)}} {{Infobox artist | name = Erica Brausen | image = Erica Brausen-en.jpg | birth_date = {{birth date|1908|1|31|df=y}} | birth_place = Düsseldorf, German Empire | death_date = {{death date and age|1992|12|16|1908|1|31|df=y}} | death_place = London, England | field = Art dealer | training = }}
'''Erica Brausen''' (31 January 1908 – 16 December 1992), was an art dealer and gallerist who established the Hanover Gallery in London in 1948.<ref>{{cite web |author= Cherith Summers|title=Brave New Visions: The émigrés who transformed the British art world |url=https://issuu.com/bravenewvisions/docs/brave_new_visions |website=ISSUU |date=16 July 2019 |accessdate=20 August 2019 |ref=p.18}}</ref> She was an early champion of several influential contemporary artists, most notably Francis Bacon.<ref name="IndOrbit">{{cite web |author=Barry Joule|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-erica-brausen-1565959.html |title=Obituary:Erica Brausen |date=30 December 1992|accessdate=2 October 2014|work=The Independent}}</ref>
==Biography== Brausen was born in Düsseldorf to a father who was a merchant and the master of the local fox-hounds.<ref name="IndOrbit"/> Brausen left Germany in the early 1930s for Paris where she rented a room in Montparnasse. There she became friends with many of the artists living in the area including Joan Miró and Alberto Giacometti.<ref name="CTrent">{{cite book|author=Carolyn Trant|title=Voyaging Out: British Women Artists from Suffrage to the Sixties |publisher=Thames & Hudson|year=2019|isbn=9780500021828}}</ref> In 1935 Brausen moved to Majorca, where she ran a bar popular with artists, writers and visiting sailors.<ref name="IndOrbit"/> She used these contacts to assist Jewish and socialist friends in escaping from Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War.<ref name="IndOrbit"/> She persuaded a US Navy submarine captain to take Michel Leiris and his family to safety in Marseille.<ref name="IndOrbit"/> Brausen herself escaped on a fishing boat and arrived, penniless, in England at the start of World War II.<ref name="Sujo"/>
In London, Brausen began organising small art exhibitions, often in artist studios, but as a German national she encountered many difficulties and restrictions. A gay artist friend married her which allowed her to work legally and she, later, obtained a job at The Redfern Gallery.<ref name="CTrent"/> In 1948, with the financial support of Arthur Jeffress, a collector she had met at a party, Brausen opened the Hanover Gallery in St. George Street off Hanover Square in central London with a solo exhibition of works by Graham Sutherland.<ref name="MHammer">{{cite book|author=Martin Hammer|publisher=Scala Publishers|year=2005|title=Graham Sutherland Landscapes, War Scenes, Portraits 1924-1950|isbn=1857594045}}</ref> From 1946 until its closure in 1973, the Hanover Gallery was among the most influential galleries in Europe.<ref name="CTrent"/> The partnership with Jeffress broke up around the end of 1953, and he left to found his own gallery. A new sponsor, Michael Behrens, stepped in shortly afterwards to support the Hanover.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hedley |first1=Gill |title=Arthur Jeffress: A Life in Art |date=2020 |publisher=A & C Black |isbn=9781838602819 |pages=196–197}}</ref>
Brausen had bought a number of Francis Bacon early works, including ''Painting (1946)'', and he held his first one-man show at the Hanover in November 1947.<ref name="IndOrbit"/> Brausen became Alberto Giacometti's principal dealer in London, selling more than seventy of his works over the lifetime of the Gallery.<ref name="Sujo">{{cite book|author=Laney Salisbury & Aly Sujo|publisher=Penguin|year=2009|title=Provenance How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art|isbn=978-0-14-311740-7}}</ref> Exhibitions at the Hanover included works by Lucian Freud, Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst.<ref name="CTrent"/> Works by Henry Moore regularly featured in the Hanovers' annual sculpture shows.<ref name="IndOrbit"/>
Brausen was a lesbian and for most of her life her partner was Catharina Koopman, known as 'Toto', a one-time Chanel model and film actress. The two met in 1945 in Ascona, Switzerland, where Koopman was recuperating after surviving seven months in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Koopman had been sent there after she was caught spying for the Italian Resistance during the Second World War. She had been caught on two previous occasions and escaped both times but she was captured a third time in October 1944 in Venice and quickly deported to the camp. Koopman helped Brausen run the Hanover and the two women lived, openly, together until Koopman's death in 1991.<ref name="TotoTel">{{cite web |author=Nisha Lilia Diu|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/10277998/Toto-Koopman-model-muse-mistress-and-spy.html |title=Toto Koopman:model, muse, mistress - and spy |date=1 September 2013|accessdate=15 October 2014|work=The Telegraph}}</ref><ref name="TotoWWD">{{cite web |author=Lorna Koski|url=http://www.wwd.com/eye/lifestyle/model-toto-koopmans-story-rediscovered-in-new-tome-7100765|title=Model Turned Spy Toto Koopman's Story Rediscovered in New Tome |date=28 August 2013|accessdate=15 October 2014|work=Women's Wear Daily}}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Brausen, Erica}} Category:1908 births Category:1992 deaths Category:20th-century German businesspeople Category:20th-century German LGBTQ people Category:Art dealers from London Category:Businesspeople from Düsseldorf Category:German emigrants to the United Kingdom Category:German LGBTQ businesspeople